True, "The Middlesteins" does not strive for quite as many of the Great American Statements embodied by "The Corrections" and "Freedom," nor does this tersely written novel attempt to dazzle the reader with virtuosic bursts of Franzenian erudition. Nevertheless, "The Middlesteins" does stun with its blunt, unsparing and unflinching depictions of family dysfunction among the Jewish-American middle class in Chicago and its suburbs, a world where selfishness seems to predominate, relationships can often be a matter of convenience and compromise, and love soon fades, if it was ever present at all.

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Franzen's praise for this novel also serves as a subtle riposte to a familiar, if specious, meme about his own work — that his domestic fictions would probably be dismissed if a woman had written them. Though there is merit in this argument, it is unfortunately often made in the service of writers who do not approach Franzen's level of mastery and ambition. That's not really the case here. "The Middlesteins" has its own lofty goals, even if it expresses them somewhat more subtly than Franzen tends to. You don't riff on Saul Bellow's "Herzog" by naming your lead female character "Herzen" if you're not seeking entrance to the hallowed halls of American lit.

This is the Buffalo Grove-born Attenberg's fourth novel, and it spans more than 50 years and several generations of the Middlestein family: Edie Middlestein née Herzen, a lawyer, and her husband Richard, a pharmacist; their children, pot-smoking Benny and bitter, neurotic, defensive Robin; and two soon-to-be-B'nai-Mitzvahed grandchildren, Josh and Emily. But the focus here is primarily on Richard and Edie — especially Edie, who, from the novel's first pages when she is an overweight 5-year-old to the novel's penultimate chapter when she is retired, diabetic and obese, weighing more than 300 pounds, seems to be slowly committing suicide by gorging herself on the food. Edie has all too often substituted food for love. "(F)ood was a wonderful place to hide," she writes. The author describes in memorable detail Edie's fixations on the "salmon-pink special sauce" of a Big Mac and the "spongy pleasure" of its bun. If Laura Esquivel's "Like Water For Chocolate" succeeded in making food into an aphrodisiac, "The Middlesteins" is that novel's antidote.

Just about every scene involving Edie can be a heart-rending chore to endure — Edie stuffing herself with Chinese food; Edie eating a McRib alone at a table while her husband and children sit at another table; Edie sobbing after Richard finally leaves her, claiming that he can no longer watch the woman kill herself; Edie embarking upon one final, sweet, but inevitably doomed attempt at love. Nevertheless, throughout, Edie undeniably remains this novel's hero, its heart, Attenberg's Herzog. Edie pulses with life no matter how close she seems to dying, and her character is emblematic of the tough compassion Attenberg exhibits throughout her novel.

Were Edie not such a dominating and tragic figure, "The Middlesteins" could function effectively as dark comedy, satirizing the foibles of its all-too-self-involved and all-too-recognizable characters. Emily and Josh's absurdly gluttonous B'nai Mitzvah — complete with hip-hop dancing and a chocolate fountain — comes to mind. But Edie's slow self destruction undercuts the humor. It's as if Edie personifies the human cost of all the pointless cruelty in which the Middlesteins engage throughout the years. When Edie first begins dating Richard Middlestein and her father is in the hospital awaiting test results, Attenberg writes that, to Edie, "(N)othing was funny in this world, in her life, nothing." Many years and more than 200 pages later, Richard Middlestein comes to the same conclusion: "He tried to muster up a joke … but nothing was funny." It's a conclusion many readers of "The Middlesteins" might come to as well as laughter catches in their throats.

Attenberg tells her novel out of order, which lends a grim fatalism to the proceedings. On page one, Edie is a little girl asking her mother to carry her; by the next chapter, she is a sick, older woman suffering from an arterial disease and may not survive surgery. We learn that Richard will be divorcing his ailing wife several chapters before we witness the scenes of their early courtship. The author undercuts moments that would seem to be fraught with emotion by briefly summarizing them or offering sardonic, deadpan commentary. Robin Middlestein's assessment of her future husband, Daniel? "He'll do." Richard Middlestein's budding relationship with a lonely widow is described as "something resembling love." Attenberg sums up Benny Middlestein's attempt to save his mother's life by preventing her from eating on the night before her surgery thusly: "It did not bring them closer together, but it did not tear them apart."

Somehow, Attenberg manages to end her novel on an upbeat note — a glimmer of affection between two unlikely characters. Yet, the relief and pleasure that Attenberg's final lines provide is short-lived, for Attenberg has already told us much of what will happen after this moment. And even if she hadn't, as readers, by this point, we have already gone through too much to trust that this moment will endure, no more than we could ever have trusted this seemingly upbeat line that ended another devastating American novel: "She felt that nothing could kill her hope now, nothing," Franzen wrote of the matriarch Enid Lambert in "The Corrections." "She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life."

Adam Langer is the author of a memoir and four novels, including "The Thieves of Manhattan" and "Crossing California."

The literary events at the Chicago Humanities Festival are illustrative of the festival's sprawling theme, “America.” A diverse array of voices, perspectives and characters will illuminate the American experience. And for those whose passion for reading is undimmed in this digital...